For those of you out there paying attention, I’ve recently taken an impromptu month-long break from blogging. To be honest, I’d become a little jaded and incredibly fucking lazy regarding the writing of posts. I was out of good ideas and work was stressing me the fuck out so I just wasn’t getting anything written in time. I’m hopeful that whilst I’ve been away I’ve managed to come up with a few subjects and have, in my usual big-headed way, got some grand ideas about adding more to my schedule. So, if nothing else, the past few weeks have seen me grow even more deluded than I was before. Yay! It’s going to be fun seeing how long this ‘can do’ attitude lasts for. As I’m currently taking a holiday from work I’m guessing it’ll be the second I get back to the daily grind. Adulthood is super fun, y’all.

Speaking of adulthood, I was perusing Instagram the other day (you may not be aware but I’m an Instagrammer now… and I’m such a fucking dick about it too) and I saw something troubling on a photo posted by a member of today’s youth.

For those not wanting to enlarge that picture I’ll retype it, negating any real need to include the screenshot in the first place. “It’s September!!! Snape is waiting for you! He is and will ALWAYS be my top favourite male character. Who doesn’t want a love like Severus had for Lily? After all this time…” Hopefully some of you out there can understand why I was so concerned. Now I may be someone who is firmly situated in her late 20s and unflinchingly cynical but it unnerves me that young women are actually hopeful that someone as fucking creepy and stalkerish as Severus Snape will fall in love with them one day. For fuck’s sake this is the craziest literary-based romantic goal I’ve heard since I realised people still lust after Mr Rochester!

I understand that people praise the character of Severus Snape because, as anti-heroes go, he’s fucking intriguing. JK Rowling created a complex and fairly delicious character for us all to get our teeth into. He’s angry, vicious and brilliantly sarcastic: the worst teacher in the whole of history but the sort of person you want making sassy comments about the unfolding madness at Hogwarts. Of course, there was never any doubt that he was working for Dumbledore all along, no matter how fucking desperately our author tried to convince us otherwise. So I don’t begrudge people suggesting that Snape was one of their favourite characters in the series. After all, he was incredibly important to the events of the Second Wizarding War. What I take umbrage with is people turning him into this romantic hero who’s love for Lily Potter was something to celebrate. Fucking “Always” has become a catchphrase for idiots who think Twilight is the ideal we should all be aspiring to. Whatever Severus Snape felt for Lily Potter, it shouldn’t be described as love. It was nothing more than obsession. Snape shouldn’t be lorded as a symbol of undying adoration. He’s a child who lost his favourite toy to a tougher, richer and more popular kid and spent the rest of his life never getting past that moment. He’s no better than Miss Havisham. Actually he’s fucking worse because at least Miss Havisham was engaged to the object of her affection.

I understand the appeal: Snape loved Lily from their childhood and never met anyone as wonderful as her again. It’s the stuff of fucking Disney dreams. However, it’s all just bullshit. Anyone who gets rejected in such a final way as he did and still mopes about it, over twenty years later, is just a fucking creep. Lily straight up told him that he wasn’t the kind of person she wanted in her life and he had the choice to become a better man or a bitter one. Well I admit, accepting bitterness into your life is a lot easier than trying to improve your entire personality. It’s no wonder the internet has rallied around Snape though. I mean aside from the fact that both Harry and JK forgive him with the simple statement “he was the bravest man I knew” (so many issues for another time), Snape has become a mascot for every pathetic, lonely person out there who is too afraid to approach someone and instead hides in the imaginary ‘friendzone’. For someone born in the wizarding world, Snape is just like every other single nerd on the internet. From Snape’s point of view, he and Lily were perfect for each other but she ended up picking his schoolyard bully who had all the advantages Snape lacked.

Except that’s not what happened at all. Let’s get back to basics for a second: friendship does not equal love. It shouldn’t be the kind of thing I have to point out but it seems as though some of you haven’t been paying attention. Just because someone likes you as a friend doesn’t mean they are under any obligation to fall in love with you. It’s tough but it’s something we all have to fucking deal with. There was never any hint that Lily ever reciprocated Snape’s feelings. They were friends, yes, but from what we can tell they’d been drifting apart ever since they arrived at Hogwarts. She was making more friends and he becoming more involved in the pursuit of the dark arts. To put it in the simplest terms I can imagine: they just weren’t right for each other. He was a future Death Eater and she was a future victim of the Death Eaters. This isn’t Romeo and Juliet people. It’s about as likely a romance as Adolf Hitler falling in love with a disabled, black, Jewish woman. It went against the very doctrine Severus and his friends were willing to live their lives by. Severus didn’t love Lily: he just selfishly wanted her for himself. She wasn’t a human being but an object that held sway over his potential to be happy. It wasn’t so much that he wanted to be with her but just that he didn’t want to be without her.

Let us look, if we may, at the relationship that Lily ended up having with James. We don’t know much but we do know that James was willing to die for her. He lay down his life in the hope that Lily and his son would survive. What was Severus willing to do to save Lily? Not sacrifice his own life, that’s for sure. He was, however, very happy to offer up her husband and only child to Voldemort so they could be murdered instead. Just let that sink in for a second: “Darling, I love you so much I sacrificed the two people you care most about in the world so we could be together forever.” That doesn’t sound like love to me. And nobody should be aspiring to experience the kind of ‘love’ that festers into a dangerous obsession. Any feeling that causes you to look into a seventeen year old boys eyes as you die so you can pretend it’s your childhood crush is something you want to avoid. I mean who knows what kind of disgusting thoughts entered his head every time he made eye contact with young Mr Potter? Blurgh! Anyone who thinks he makes an acceptable romantic partner really is just as fucking insane as Snape himself.

Just look at what became of him. He ended his life as an essentially friendless, loveless and very unhappy man just because he had pinned all of his future happiness on a girl who rejected him. It also destroys most of the reasons that made him such a wonderful character. One of the things that made Severus so fantastic was his inner struggle with morality. Dumbledore himself made a big deal about the “choice between what is right, and what is easy” and, up until the end of Book 7, Severus was the perfect symbol for that very decision. Until JK went all fucking fairy tale on us again and turned his story into a love story. For one thing, it is a massive cliche and a super lazy way for a writer to absolve a morally questionable character of his sins. I mean nobody discusses Severus’ years of muggle torture and murder; all they ever fucking talk about is fucking “always”. For another thing, when you accept creepy obsessive love as Severus’ only motivation then you remove any question of morality from the equation. He didn’t care about doing the right thing at all. He just let an old man manipulate his adoration for a dead woman to get him to change sides.

You know what, I used to be just like that person I referenced earlier. I always loved Snape as a character and couldn’t wait for his moment of redemption. What I got was an absurd and incredibly unsettling ‘love’ story that completely spoiled him for me. He deserved his moment of bravery that would show all the doubters just how fucking stupid they were. Instead he was just Harry’s mother’s stalker who actually turned out to be quite useful. Seems like the perfect person to name your child after.

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Published by Murdocal

Who is Murdocal? A casual critic who is a little bit too obsessed with pop culture. A young woman who swears and rants much more than she knows she should whilst trying to make her way in an adult world she isn't prepared for. A not as recent as she'd like literature graduate who, between job applications and subsequent rejections, has turned to the internet to fight the boredom and review the shit out of everything.
"Maybe, just maybe, I'm the faller. Every family has someone who falls, who doesn't make the grade, who stumbles, who life trips up. Maybe I'm our faller."
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